Baseball History, Commentary and Analysis

Let’s Go Buy Some Baseball Cards!

Last week, I was on vacation with my family over at Myrtle Beach, about a five-hour drive from my home in Greenville. Among the places I had on my agenda to visit was a baseball card shop called Knarf & Kram. You see, here in Greenville, as in many other towns these days, there just isn’t a sports card dealer to be found. Basically, if you want to buy baseball cards in the Greenville area, you go to Target, or you go to eBay. Occasionally, a local flee market might have something interesting to offer as well.

But I’ve really missed walking into an actual sports card shop full of shelves of old boxes of cards, signed memorabilia, rare oddities displayed under the glass counter up front, etc. So before I drove out to Myrtle Beach, I did some research and discovered that there existed an actual baseball card shop named, as I’ve already said, Knarf & Kram. Knarf & Kram, it turns out, is co-owned by a father and son, Frank and Mark (thus Knarf and Kram, backwards.)

Frank wasn’t there when I showed up, but Mark, like me a displaced northerner (almost everyone in Myrtle Beach is a displaced northerner), gave me a warm welcome when I came in around 11:00 on a Wednesday morning. Mark informed me that this place was a dream of his and his father’s going back several years, and that they were now in (if I remember correctly) just their third year in existence.

Their store is well-appointed with exactly the kinds of sports paraphernalia I had hoped to see, including vintage photos, baseball cards old and new, game-used uniforms, and lots of autographs. Mark, as became obvious from our nearly one-hour conversation, is a huge sports fan, and a great guy. He’s fair, straightforward and extremely down-to-earth. Just for the record, he’s also a Yankees fan.

I finally purchased a rare 1/15 Will Clark Upper Deck Signature Sensations, a photo of David Wright hitting the first home run at CitiField, and a few other items. My total bill came to around a hundred bucks, which I considered a fair price for all I’d obtained.

The best part of the visit, however, was simply the interaction I got to have with a fellow baseball fan, just a few years younger than myself. You just can’t beat those one-on-one interpersonal connections you can make when you get to talk with another baseball fan, face to face. They are also, of course, on-line at knarfandkram.com

So if you ever find yourself in the restaurant district near the Coastal Grand Strand mall area of Myrtle Beach, pay a visit to Knarf & Kram, and tell him Bill Miller sent you. You won’t be disappointed.

Single Post Navigation

8 thoughts on “Let’s Go Buy Some Baseball Cards!”

piranhas! all of em! i ask for a box of commons thinking i know what’s up and
they give me a look of “where the hell are you from? this is about money sir.”
whatever.. it still suddenly becomes very clear that ed ott looks like the penguin and so combing for his cards becomes an effective time killer in today’s climate.

Ott was just one of out seven in steal attempts in 1980, but what can you expect from a penguin? And speaking of penguins, Ron Cey was just 24 out of 53 in his entire career.
You want commons, come on over and grab a box. Got too many as it is. But yeah, commerce pretty much ruins everything.
Thanks for coming on board and taking a look around.
Bill